Tag: maps

Last summer when my mom came to visit, she bought me a present: Juan Rivera’s Colorado, 1765. Fresh off my trip to OKC where my Spanish colonial history obsession was kindled by stops in Santa Fe and at the Pecos pueblo I had stopped in at Ouray’s Buckskin Bookseller to find a copy of the journals of the Dominguez-Escalate expedition. The owner pointed out this new release from Western Reflections Publishing (yes, I’m still slowly purchasing their entire catalog).

Steven Baker scrupulously traces Rivera’s expeditions to southwestern Colorado. Apparently there was some controversy about whether Rivera had gone to Moab or to Delta. I loved the detailed tracing of his route. I’m a map and geography nerd and the territory traveled by Rivera is my home ground. He passed by Chimney Rock then, on his fall expedition, up through the Dolores River canyon to what is now the west end of Montrose County and then over the Uncompaghre Plateau to Delta. I find myself just astounded by what they were able to accomplish with such limited information!

This beautiful hard cover wasn’t cheap (thanks Mom!) but it is filled will gorgeous maps drawn by Gail Sargent of each section of the journey as well as photographs of many locations with notations of trails traversed by the expedition.

I’m so glad that this book has joined my library. I think it’s incredibly important to know the history of the area where you live and I learned so much (and added a few hikes to my list and … bonus! they’ll be spring accessible!).

I’ve passed through Santa Fe several times but my trip down to the WCWS was the first time that I had time to stop and absorb some of the history in the Plaza. After leaving Santa Fe, I stopped somewhat impulsively at Pecos National Historic Park where I learned more about Pueblo culture of New Mexico and tried to relate it to Chimney Rock.

While the text of Kessel’s text is a little on the dry side I definitely made a list of places that I want to visit next time I’m in Santa Fe. I didn’t realize that in addition to being a cartographer, Miera also made altar screens and other religious objects. (It seems that there’s still a couple in the area.) I also learned a lot more about how Santa Fe was established and how the relationship of New Spain to New Mexico worked.

Not surprisingly, Miera y Pacheco made me want to know more about all the things he was involved in, especially the Dominguez-Escalante expedition (for which Domniguez-Escalante National Conservation Area and their canyons are named). It’s easy to forget that colonial Spanish history really did affect this area and I’m excited to continue to learn more.

Also driven by visiting Pecos (and then a little bit by reading about Miera and his historical context) was needing to know more about the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Pecos Pueblo had a very large mission church before the Revolt but after the “bloodless” return of the Spanish a much smaller mission church was built. Wanting to know more about how that revolt came to be and how it affected the colonization of New Mexico, I ordered a copy of David Robert’s The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion That Drove The Spanish Out of the Southwest.

The Pueblo Revolt didn’t contain as much information as I had hoped about the events leading up to the Revolt. It rehashed in a more condensed way the history of the Spanish in New Mexico (which was helpful!) and told the story of how the revolt occurred as well as how the Spanish reconquered New Mexico. Roberts very explicitly states that he isn’t necessarily trying to create a “balanced” tale of how the Spanish and the Puebloans both contributed to the bloodshed in the Revolt which I found refreshing; I find it pretty hard to buy that the blame should be evenly shared in this case.

I’ve purchased another couple of books as a result of my current colonial history obsession and I can’t wait to read them and share them with you!

(Clearly, I’ve released myself from book buying restriction because a) I’ve met some financial goals and b) because they only need to move across the yard next time…)

I’ve been woefully deficient in the adventure department lately (out to fix that today!) so I’m going to share a little glimpse of our life as it is right now.

Since we don’t have internet at home right now, we’re sitting in the library using the internet. I’m here on our computer while Forrest is using a public computer. (We’re totally gChatting across the building.)

Tabs open on my computer right now:

Google Search: “Dogs on Abrahms Mountain?” Looks like a short jeep ride, a long ridge hike, and a great day with my boys.

It really makes me wish I had been able to explore canyon country “back in the day” before it became a major tourist attraction. (Um, I mean, how cool would it have been if Ed Abbey was your park ranger at Arches National Monument and you gave him a beer and talked over your campfire?)

I woke up snuggled between Forrest and Sprocket and not too horribly cold at all. The sun was shining and we had the whole day for adventuring. We let Sprocket out of the tent as we emerged from the tent. It took him about thirty seconds to hop into the river. We pulled the tent into the sun for the dew to dry and ate our breakfast of bagels and cream cheese. Our plans to hike off of Vermillion Pass sort of got trashed when we had to head lower to find a camp so we decided to make up the day as we went along—especially since we didn’t have a map for the Kootenai National Forest and were functioning only with the bleed from our Lolo and Idaho Panhandle National Forest maps.

Sprocket in Happy Gulch

Forrest picked out Silver Butte Pass (4,272′, Pass #3) as a likely destination. Down the Vermillion River we went to the junction with the Vermillion River road. We took a quick look at Vermillion Falls and then branched off the main road to the Pass. As we wound our way up the mountain, I realized, “Hey, I’ve been here before!” And then, “Oh dear, I think this road only exits the mountains to the east.” (I totally had been there in Fall 2010 on my first Cabinets adventure). The east side of the mountains was a little further than we were planning on going but by the time I was sure I knew where we were headed we decided to go for it anyway.

CampingRainbow over Vermillion Falls

Sure enough, we popped out of the woods on Highway 2 about thirty miles south of Libby. Although we didn’t have a map, we knew that most of the Cabinets were either official wilderness or a designated roadless area so we either had to go back the way we came or head up to Libby. We figured that Libby would have some sort of 4th of July festival so we headed that way. Turns out, Libby doesn’t have much of anything.

Kootenai Falls

We bought some fruit and chips and decided to head back into the mountains to BBQ the rest of our hot dogs. We stopped to hike down to Kootenai Falls—pictures just can’t do justice to the amount of water moving through that canyon! Leaving the falls, we looped back south on Montana Highway 56 back towards Thompson Falls. We stopped to let Sprocket swim in Bull Lake but there were a lot of people around so we decided to continue on. Just south of the lake we started to get some amazing views of the Cabinets and then we spotted a Forest Service road heading up towards them. Based on the edges of the area we could see on our maps I guessed that it was a loop that would bring us back to the highway in about 10 miles so away we went.

Dock jumping at Bull Lake

We detoured up a spur road that seemed like it would give us some views. The maps even showed a lookout on top. The road ended in a buggy area with some decent views but we were hungry and decided to cook the last of our hot dogs before deciding what to do. Although we weren’t sure how far the lookout was (it was either a mile or 3 miles…) we decided to go for it. When we spotted the lookout, it was over on the next ridge, about two miles away, and since the bugs were really bad, Team 3Up made the call to settle for our views from the parking area.

Chipmunk in the Jeep

After we made it back to the main road, going over Snake Creek Pass (3,604′, Pass #4) and then back to the highway, it was time to get ourselves home. The drive home over Thompson Pass (4,862′, Pass #5) and Dobson Pass (4,235′, Pass #6) was all pavement and uneventful aside from getting an ice cream cone in Prichard.

This is states been to in the purest sense. We’ve been to them because we drove through them. (I DON’T count airport stop overs. And if you want my real opinion, I haven’t been to South Carolina, New Jersey, Delaware*, and Ohio because I didn’t do anything notable in them.)

We sat down with a map of the US and started planning about how far we’ll go each day. We’ll certainly be refining our plans as we go along but having a pretty good outline of where we’ll be will help us start picking out cool things to see.

Sprocket was quite happy to help us with the whole mapping bit!

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Hi, I'm Beth. There are probably many ways I could describe myself but #damselNOTindistress is a good place to begin.